With Election Day just a few weeks away, longtime church members Lucky Hartunian and Janie Booth sat outside the Revival Christian Fellowship’s sanctuary in Menifee, California, inviting congregants to register to vote.
The women urged those streaming into the evangelical church’s Saturday morning civic engagement event to “make their voices heard as Christians.” After mail-in ballots go out statewide, Booth and Hartunian will be among church volunteers collecting completed, sealed ballots and dropping them off at the county office the next day.
It’s a practice known as ballot gathering - or ballot harvesting — that’s been a source of national controversy over the years.
Robert Tyler, a California-based attorney who represents conservative churches and pastors, said he still believes “ballot harvesting and universal vote by mail creates opportunities for fraud.”
“But the rules of the game have changed,” he said. “Until the law changes, we have to get out and gather ballots like they are doing.”
We really need to start taking away tax exemption for churches that pull political stunts. Want to break the agreement? Fine, be as fiscally bankrupt as you are morally.
Fixed.
I’ve said it before I’ll say it again, churches shouldn’t automatically be tax exempt, if they want tax exempt status they should have to register as a 501c3 or similar like any other organization and follow the same rules. Automatically qualifying for tax exempt status allows them to get away with so much shit.